20% Cooler is a blog series where we look at various ways to improve your personal appearance and experience in chat rooms. This time we're going to look at how to construct a 'good' nickname

Hey everyone, your favorite (Probably not.) Pegasus here. I've been dishing out advice to the random people who P2P me for a while now, and generally it's always the same thing I reply with. Most of the time I react negatively to a large volume P2P's because they just give off such a bad impression straight away and I know a lot of people do the same, or they just ignore them. So instead of continuing to hand out the same advice over and over again, I figured I'd write it all down into a blog. So today I'm going to be looking at arguably the most important thing, your name.

Your name is very critical as it will always be the first thing a person sees from you in the chat rooms, but so many people have variants of effectively the same name they all just blur together. You can scroll down the members list at any given time and a large bulk of names will sound so similar they could be the same person on 60+ accounts. With a poor name people might not even read your P2P and might just instantly ignore you, effectively shooting yourself in the foot before you have even got started.

"So, why are so many names of the users rather 'bad'? What makes a name 'bad'? How can I avoid having a 'bad' name?"

Firstly, let's clear up that what is 'good' and 'bad' is purely subjective, what I think is a good name, may be a poor name from your view. So there is some personal, preconceptions about what names people like and dislike. So below are a few things that I think makes a name 'bad'.
#1: Numbers (And numbers being used instead of letters)

When the new site was released, every nickname was freed up meaning that for the most part there is no reason to have numbers in your name. It gives off quite a negative impression for a couple of reasons. It shows you have a lack of imagination to think up another name and it can be quite off putting for people in a roleplay scenario having a partner with numbers in their name (This second point is more if a minor nitpick really.)
#2: Your "ASL"

This information is on your profile, if people genuinely want to know it then they will look at your profile. It just comes across as poor if you could find nothing else to promote yourself outside of your basic information.

#3: Your first name

You use a nickname online for a reason, there are infinite amounts of people with the exact same first name as you but your nickname is far more unique and personalized to you and, this again shows a poor imagination if you could only think of first names whilst creating your account. If it is the name of a character you roleplay as, it is more acceptable but I would still advise shying away from just using regular first names.
#4:The name of a fetish or roleplay you want

This is a really big "No" in my opinion, there are much better ways to let people know what you are interested in (Again you can put all this on your profile.) rather than having it as part of your name. Instead of doing this get to know someone and ask what things they enjoy sexually, rather than sitting waiting for like minded people to come to you. In addition you cannot change nicknames as freely with the new site as you could before, this means that if you want to try something different for a change, you are still stuck using a name that might have an unrelated fetish in it that you might not want to include at that moment in time.

#5: Having the word "Dom" or any variant of Dominant/Master/Domme

This is a really important one in my opinion, if you need to tell people that you are dominant with your name, then you come across as incredibly insecure. A 'good' Dom should not need to literally shout it at people every time they speak.

#6: Having some euphemism for sexual anatomy in your name

"Yes, you have a penis. So does half the population. Good job."
"Yes, you have breasts. So does half the population." (Probably more if you count moobs.) "Good job."

#7: All caps / no caps

This is generally just a show of poor grammar. A name composed entirely of upper case letters just comes across as insecure or immature, and no caps just displays a lack of effort to hold the shift key for half a second.

#8: Your sexual orientation

This is on your profile, for the most part no one cares. Putting Lesbian in your name (Or any variant of) will not stop men from sending you P2P requests. This is also true for names that have things like "4f" in them to denote looking for a female partner.

#9: Slut, or any variant of.

You might be incredibly sexually active, but that can apply to a large number of people using the chat. This, like a lot of the other points, just conveys a poor imagination.

"So Rainbow, with all that, what name should I pick?"

I really can't help with this one, the above is just a few rules to help you avoid joining that congealed blob with a large majority of the chat users, your nickname should be something that represents you and fits your personality, without outright yelling at people what your personality is, that's something you have to convey through your conversations rather than in your name.

A large amount of the points above could be shifted into your profile information, rather than in your name. It keeps things a lot tidier and prevents a mass of redundant information (Such as your age, sex and location).

If you have any questions, discussion or opinions on the topic, feel free to post them below (You can also ask me in chat if you would prefer the question to be private) and I hope at least someone has found this post to be helpful.

Next week with 20% Cooler I will be looking at profiles themselves, if you enjoyed reading this be sure to check it out.